U2 Wins Golden Globe for Best Original Song

attends the 71st Annual Golden Globe Awards held at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 12, 2014 in Beverly Hills, California.

(Jason Merritt/Getty Images)

By Shannon Carlin

Tonight (Jan. 12), U2 took home the prize for Best Original Song at the 71st Annual Golden Globe Awards.

The Irish band won for their track “Ordinary Love” — their first song in three years — from the Nelson Mandela biopic, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.

The Edge took to the podium first to speak about Mandela, telling the crowd, “We we have been working for President Mandela, since the ’70s. Since we were teenagers.” He explained that the first concert the band ever played was in support of ending the apartheid movement, remarking that 35 years later they were able to write a song for the man that inspired their activism.

Larry Mullen Jr. followed by telling the crowd that thanks to Mandela, “holy Catholic Ireland” was able to eventually see peace.

Adam Clayton than thanked Brian Burton, better known as Danger Mouse, for helping them make the song, and Coldplay frontman Chris Martins for helping them “work the song out.”

Bono than took to the mic to talk about the band’s great connection with the track and Mandela, who died Dec. 5 at his home at the age of 95.

“It really is personal for us, very, very personal,” Bono said. “This man turned our life upside down, right side up. He was a man who refused to hate, not because he didn’t have hate or anger or these things, but that he thought love could do a better job.”

He then added, “We wrote a love song and that’s kind of what’s extraordinary about the film. It’s this dysfunctional love story, that’s why you should see it…You know about the global statesman, you don’t know about the man.”

His last word being, “We’re good at the dysfunctional love stories.”

U2 is expected to release their new album — the follow-up to 2009’s No Line on the Horizon — in April 2014.

The band beat out their good friend Chris Martin’s band Coldplay with their song “Atlas” from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Justin Timberlake — along with his Inside Llewyn Daviscastmates Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver — for their song “Please Mr. Kennedy,” “Let It Go” from the animated Disney flick Frozen and Taylor Swift for her song “Sweeter Than Fiction,” written by fun.’sJack Antonoff and from the documentary, One Chance.

This is the second year in a row Swift has gone home empty handed at the Golden Globes. Last year she was nominated for Best Original Song for “Safe and Sound,” off The Hunger Games soundtrack, but lost to Adele, who took home the prize for “Skyfall,” from the Bond film of the same name.

Earlier in the night, Alex Ebert from the band, Edward and the Magnetic Zeroes took home the statue for Original Score – Motion Picture for his work on the film All Is Lost starring Robert Redford.

U2 backstage in the press room at the Golden Globes. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)